"Hall of Shame" discussion thread

I'm really surprised that olightstore.com is up to no good.

I thought they were smart enough to avoid doing that.

I’ve seen Olight asking other people to post their stuff on reddit for years. The rules on /r/flashlight allow three marketing posts per month, and the solution to this problem was to count obvious shill posts toward the total.

I don’t know, but at this rate, all known vendors will eventually appear on the HoS list.

It only take one desperate dude from a company (or one desperate attempt to gain customers) to bring their company on this sort of list.

Yep, although the rules of BLF are fairly easy to follow, they're even easier to break.

It’s actually quite a tough choice.

It will look draconian if we never retire companies from the list after long period.
Yet, it will look too lenient if we do retire someone from the list after certian periods.

I’m definitely open to removing companies from this list after they establish a track record of honest business with us. Thus far, I’ve had a grand total of zero requests to do so, which I guess proves the point that companies stoop to this level when they simply don’t care anymore.

Are they even aware of being enlisted?
Some learned to be good members eventually (Vapcell is on my mind) and I would be surprised if they didn’t care.

Vapcell is the only one that seems to have turned things around. I still think they deserve to wait a year to be removed, which hasn’t passed yet.

Wurrkos recently spammed the crap out of people via PM, requesting reviews of a dive light. The terms involved getting refunded after the review was posted. I didn’t do it, though I did see the light in question also show up in the WTS forum shortly after…

It’s that ” after review is posted ” that implies only 5 star need apply.

I constantly receive emails from new unknown flashlights brands to review their products (not specifically in BLF). Weird thing is I’m not even an active reviewer anymore and my last flashlight reviews was very long time ago.

And even weirder is that they have my personal email address from which I have never contacted them before. I assume there is a pretty extensive “reviewers contact list” that’s being passed around between manufacturers. Just imagine the amount of people out there receiving free lights and posting false 5 star reviews everywhere.

I never read 5 star reviews, or the 1 stars either. I go straight to the 4 stars and 3 stars; they seem to have the most honest content.

Seeing the latest entry I felt disappointed. Not with the site which I know does many regrettable things but with our admin (who I still respect highly).

I reject the notion of “stolen affiliate codes/coupons”. They are copied, not stolen. In a system that purposefully allows that.

Fair point, changed it to: “affiliate codes/coupons copied from other users.”

Yep, at least someone associated with their email account @imalent.com

I disagree. This is not how it works.

If you are here long enough, you would notice that I (or even Max) do not publish all our exclusive codes publicly (searchable from the net). I have been providing countless hours of free consultation for vendors for years for improving products, in exchange to secure better deals for my readers. These despicable people simply take advantage of us by pretending as potential buyers. If you guys support my work, please do not visit their site.

I recognize that you do a lot of work. And I value this work highly.
I don’t want to encourage people to use coupons copied from you.

But all of the few shops that I know to rely on affiliate marketers like you permit such code copying. To be honest I don’t know why but they do. And I can’t think of any reason other than that they think it’s beneficial for them. In this light I can’t agree with the notion of “stealing” codes. They are just copied.
And BTW I find it interesting how the written rules differ so much from unwritten ones. And how it creates a lot of friction in the community.

I still remember a special BLF exclusive discount at Banggood a couple of years ago…
(Martin / M4DM4X arranged it at the time, it used to be HERE )
people did the exact same thing right then, they used all of the available codes, copied them, made them public on the internet, bought expensive lights as where BG ended up to deny those codes within no-time, so the BLF users were not able to use the code

In Dutch we have a saying that goes like: A donkey usually does not hurt himself to the same stone twice

I pretty much done with Sofirnlight.com I placed 3 orders from them , the first one had the wrong tracking number and was for a different customers living in a different state.

Another order has a tracking number indicating it is in China waiting to ship for the last 4 weeks. Lan Lee says it is on a plane near my house .

I placed another order recently which I now have asked to cancel

I don’t believe low prices should be an excuse for poor business practices.

Sorry, I didn’t get this. What written rules are you referring to?

That copying codes is bad.